Remember that under the IBA regime the itv companies were just programme contractors ..
as the IBA Was the broadcaster ...
so in some ways to use current parlance all they were were super indies with playout ...
So I'm sure that they would love to get revenue from other super indies ..

BTW There was a period if about 9 months when peak time Friday evening BBC ITV and CH 4 all came via BBC Television Centre .

Further evidence that London now has a shortage of TV studios…(?) the first couple of episodes of the new series of The Jonathan Ross Show will be recorded at Elstree Studios as TC1 in Television Centre (it’s home since it had to move from The London Studios) is unavailable. I’m not sure if The Jonathan Ross Show has ever been recorded at Elstree before, and I’m not sure what the plans are beyond the first couple of shows.

Remember that under the IBA regime the itv companies were just programme contractors ..
as the IBA Was the broadcaster ...
so in some ways to use current parlance all they were were super indies with playout ...
So I'm sure that they would love to get revenue from other super indies ..

BTW There was a period if about 9 months when peak time Friday evening BBC ITV and CH 4 all came via BBC Television Centre .

BBC channels self evident .. itv were in TC 1 and Chris Evans was radiolinked from Riverside to TC and then coax /fibre to,the Tower ....

Going back to TIYL .. I sure that an out of London live programme gave the Post Office a problem as the normal programme switching needed to be sourced from outside London when it occurred.. a break from the routine !!!!

BBC channels self evident .. itv were in TC 1 and Chris Evans was radiolinked from Riverside to TC and then coax /fibre to,the Tower ....

Going back to TIYL .. I sure that an out of London live programme gave the Post Office a problem as the normal programme switching needed to be sourced from outside London when it occurred.. a break from the routine !!!!

Not sure I understand your last sentence, programme switching was performed by the ITV companies themselves, the PO did circuit switching. Can you elaborate?

BBC channels self evident .. itv were in TC 1 and Chris Evans was radiolinked from Riverside to TC and then coax /fibre to,the Tower ....

Going back to TIYL .. I sure that an out of London live programme gave the Post Office a problem as the normal programme switching needed to be sourced from outside London when it occurred.. a break from the routine !!!!

Not sure I understand your last sentence, programme switching was performed by the ITV companies themselves, the PO did circuit switching.

It would have been like World of Sport but on a smaller scale. That programme had live contributions from various ITV companies' OB's, that were routed via their own studios, and then back into LWT as remote sources. However LWT's MCR (?) would have had a number of sources to switch to the WoS studio, all coming in via the GPO tower ?

For instance. Horse racing from York. Microwave to Emley, Emley to YTV Leeds, then to GPO Leeds, down to London Tower, then to LWT ?

However, what was going to air in YTV area, will have been LWT's studio output, via the GPO network, to YTV. (Even though their own pictures were taking a 400 mile round trip)

..... I have just found a BBC booklet called BBC Television A British Engineering Achievement (Nov 1961 price 3s 6d) on the cover of which is a gigantic Marconi colour camera no doubt 3X4.5", somewhat bigger than the 3X3" IO which itself was very large. Inside the same picture is displayed with the caption "The Camera" and two men sat at a very large solitary CCU plus a huge monitor and racks full of valves, possibly at Alexandra Palace.

Possibly AP - I've never known the exact date of the move to 'H' LGS for colour experiments ......

There reads
"The BBC used three versions of this camera - at Ally Pally they first used the Marconi copy of the RCA TK-41"
very likely my recollection of reading of RCA TK-4*series.

[As opposed to TK 4* and endless studio days of Dad's Army opening titles on 35mm]

If you go back to that TV history website and look for the Wycombe Road studios you’ll find quite a bit of information on Intertel’s use of early Marconi colour cameras and reference as to their American ancestry.

Not sure if you knew, but much later we at Teddington used to record "Marked Personal" from Wycombe Road studios with comms over a 4 wire.
I always fancied Stephanie Beacham something rotten, in my dreams I know.

Now that is fascinating and something I didn't know. This studio which was owned by LWT and was also the location where LWT's OB units were based was being used to record an overspill of Thames drama. Marked Personal and how many others I wonder. And I used to think relations between Thames and LWT were poor. So how did this work exactly. Stephanie Beacham and cast were at Wycombe Road. Were the cameras being directed from a control gallery within this studio or from an LWT OB scanner. Were the signals being played down the line and being recorded on one of the Ampex Quad machines at Teddington by Fedman and his colleagues. How did the comms over the 4 wire circuit work. One thing as I have said on many occasions, I always felt the facilities at Teddington were never quite sufficient enough considering the vast number of programmes produced each week and the staff must have really struggled to cope. Incidentally regarding the episode of Public Eye which Stephanie appeared in and recently shown on TPTV, the character she played must have been a Radio 1 fan as she was carrying and playing a small transistor radio all the way through this episode. I still have it on Sky+.

BBC channels self evident .. itv were in TC 1 and Chris Evans was radiolinked from Riverside to TC and then coax /fibre to,the Tower ....

Going back to TIYL .. I sure that an out of London live programme gave the Post Office a problem as the normal programme switching needed to be sourced from outside London when it occurred.. a break from the routine !!!!

Not sure I understand your last sentence, programme switching was performed by the ITV companies themselves, the PO did circuit switching. Can you elaborate?

Unlike now where there is one source for itv ..in times gone by one programme contractor would play the programme out to the other programme companies that were taking it ..eg ATV will play out CrossRoads , Granada played out Corrie ..... and PO can connected it all together..... switching in ad breaks ... so rather than back haul to London output it from there
Did they..feed TIYL out if the local itv station as if it was their programme .
Rather than how it would be done now as @Mark C suggests

..... I have just found a BBC booklet called BBC Television A British Engineering Achievement (Nov 1961 price 3s 6d) on the cover of which is a gigantic Marconi colour camera no doubt 3X4.5", somewhat bigger than the 3X3" IO which itself was very large. Inside the same picture is displayed with the caption "The Camera" and two men sat at a very large solitary CCU plus a huge monitor and racks full of valves, possibly at Alexandra Palace.

Possibly AP - I've never known the exact date of the move to 'H' LGS for colour experiments ......

There reads
"The BBC used three versions of this camera - at Ally Pally they first used the Marconi copy of the RCA TK-41"
very likely my recollection of reading of RCA TK-4*series.

[As opposed to TK 4* and endless studio days of Dad's Army opening titles on 35mm]

If you go back to that TV history website and look for the Wycombe Road studios you’ll find quite a bit of information on Intertel’s use of early Marconi colour cameras and reference as to their American ancestry.

Not sure if you knew, but much later we at Teddington used to record "Marked Personal" from Wycombe Road studios with comms over a 4 wire.
I always fancied Stephanie Beacham something rotten, in my dreams I know.

Now that is fascinating and something I didn't know. This studio which was owned by LWT and was also the location where LWT's OB units were based was being used to record an overspill of Thames drama. Marked Personal and how many others I wonder. And I used to think relations between Thames and LWT were poor. So how did this work exactly. Stephanie Beacham and cast were at Wycombe Road. Were the cameras being directed from a control gallery within this studio or from an LWT OB scanner. Were the signals being played down the line and being recorded on one of the Ampex Quad machines at Teddington by Fedman and his colleagues. How did the comms over the 4 wire circuit work. One thing as I have said on many occasions, I always felt the facilities at Teddington were never quite sufficient enough considering the vast number of programmes produced each week and the staff must have really struggled to cope. Incidentally regarding the episode of Public Eye which Stephanie appeared in and recently shown on TPTV, the character she played must have been a Radio 1 fan as she was carrying and playing a small transistor radio all the way through this episode. I still have it on Sky+.

"Marked Personel" was the only programme I remember being recorded at Teddington from Wycombe Rd Studios. Communication was very basic, usually a 4 wire, might have even been a "Tele F" (Field telephone) sometimes. You only needed to hear "here's a clock" to start recording, "stop recording", and for the VT guy to confirm he had a good recording. All the crew were Wycombe Rd, apart from Studio Director, PA, and possibly the Floor manager. Cannot remember if the gallery was in an OB truck, red16v will I'm sure be able to give you more details on that. As far as I was concerned we never had any inter company problems, the programmes were usually edited and transmitted from Teddington.

BBC channels self evident .. itv were in TC 1 and Chris Evans was radiolinked from Riverside to TC and then coax /fibre to,the Tower ....

Going back to TIYL .. I sure that an out of London live programme gave the Post Office a problem as the normal programme switching needed to be sourced from outside London when it occurred.. a break from the routine !!!!

Not sure I understand your last sentence, programme switching was performed by the ITV companies themselves, the PO did circuit switching. Can you elaborate?

Unlike now where there is one source for itv ..in times gone by one programme contractor would play the programme out to the other programme companies that were taking it ..eg ATV will play out CrossRoads , Granada played out Corrie ..... and PO can connected it all together..... switching in ad breaks ... so rather than back haul to London output it from there
Did they..feed TIYL out if the local itv station as if it was their programme .
Rather than how it would be done now as @Mark C suggests

red16v will be along to clarify I'm sure, but it's my understanding (from him) that in fact the vast majority of ITV network programming was fed via the so called 'Nominated Contractor' (Thames Monday to Friday Afternoon, LWT Friday evening to Sunday night).

Corrie would be fed from Granada down to Thames, and from Thames back out to the network. I always thought YTV and stations north received it from Granada, but no, it came via Thames London. I assume Granada themselves just fed their own transmitter locally with it of course.

That arrangement simplified ITN news flashes, because Thames and LWT always had ITN as an incoming line to them, so they could neatly cut to them during a network programme, without any nasty splats.

So all the GPO did was to switch the relevant ITV company down the lines into Thames/LWT ?

BBC channels self evident .. itv were in TC 1 and Chris Evans was radiolinked from Riverside to TC and then coax /fibre to,the Tower ....

Going back to TIYL .. I sure that an out of London live programme gave the Post Office a problem as the normal programme switching needed to be sourced from outside London when it occurred.. a break from the routine !!!!

Not sure I understand your last sentence, programme switching was performed by the ITV companies themselves, the PO did circuit switching. Can you elaborate?

Unlike now where there is one source for itv ..in times gone by one programme contractor would play the programme out to the other programme companies that were taking it ..eg ATV will play out CrossRoads , Granada played out Corrie ..... and PO can connected it all together..... switching in ad breaks ... so rather than back haul to London output it from there
Did they..feed TIYL out if the local itv station as if it was their programme .
Rather than how it would be done now as @Mark C suggests

Still not sure of what you're saying. Whilst it would be usual for ATV to play out 'Crossroads' to the rest of the ITV network on the other hand it would not have been considered unusual for ATV to play out 'Crossroads' down circuit to the Thames/LWT and for Thames/LWT to network that ATV feed to the rest of the ITV Network. I think maybe we are still confusing the PO role (circuit switching) with ITV's role (programme switching)?

Can I take another example? Let's say it's Friday night and ATV are playing out 'The Muppets' to all the other companies at 7pm and Granada are playing out 'Coronation St' to all the other companies at 8pm. If it was convenient (and it usually was ) and cheaper (it usually was) ATV would play out The Muppets to THS/LWT who would then re-network it to all the other companies on their main outgoing network circuit. At 8pm Granada would play out Coronation St to THS/LWT who would simply switch their main outgoing circuit from an incoming PO (ATV) circuit to the incoming PO (GRA) circuit. No PO switching involved as there were permanent PO circuits up and down the backbone of the country easily connecting ATV and GRA to London on completely separate circuits. Can you see the difference? Perhaps you do and it is me mis-understanding your reply!

..... I have just found a BBC booklet called BBC Television A British Engineering Achievement (Nov 1961 price 3s 6d) on the cover of which is a gigantic Marconi colour camera no doubt 3X4.5", somewhat bigger than the 3X3" IO which itself was very large. Inside the same picture is displayed with the caption "The Camera" and two men sat at a very large solitary CCU plus a huge monitor and racks full of valves, possibly at Alexandra Palace.

Possibly AP - I've never known the exact date of the move to 'H' LGS for colour experiments ......

There reads
"The BBC used three versions of this camera - at Ally Pally they first used the Marconi copy of the RCA TK-41"
very likely my recollection of reading of RCA TK-4*series.

[As opposed to TK 4* and endless studio days of Dad's Army opening titles on 35mm]

If you go back to that TV history website and look for the Wycombe Road studios you’ll find quite a bit of information on Intertel’s use of early Marconi colour cameras and reference as to their American ancestry.

Not sure if you knew, but much later we at Teddington used to record "Marked Personal" from Wycombe Road studios with comms over a 4 wire.
I always fancied Stephanie Beacham something rotten, in my dreams I know.

Now that is fascinating and something I didn't know. This studio which was owned by LWT and was also the location where LWT's OB units were based was being used to record an overspill of Thames drama. Marked Personal and how many others I wonder. And I used to think relations between Thames and LWT were poor. So how did this work exactly. Stephanie Beacham and cast were at Wycombe Road. Were the cameras being directed from a control gallery within this studio or from an LWT OB scanner. Were the signals being played down the line and being recorded on one of the Ampex Quad machines at Teddington by Fedman and his colleagues. How did the comms over the 4 wire circuit work. One thing as I have said on many occasions, I always felt the facilities at Teddington were never quite sufficient enough considering the vast number of programmes produced each week and the staff must have really struggled to cope. Incidentally regarding the episode of Public Eye which Stephanie appeared in and recently shown on TPTV, the character she played must have been a Radio 1 fan as she was carrying and playing a small transistor radio all the way through this episode. I still have it on Sky+.

"Marked Personel" was the only programme I remember being recorded at Teddington from Wycombe Rd Studios. Communication was very basic, usually a 4 wire, might have even been a "Tele F" (Field telephone) sometimes. You only needed to hear "here's a clock" to start recording, "stop recording", and for the VT guy to confirm he had a good recording. All the crew were Wycombe Rd, apart from Studio Director, PA, and possibly the Floor manager. Cannot remember if the gallery was in an OB truck, red16v will I'm sure be able to give you more details on that. As far as I was concerned we never had any inter company problems, the programmes were usually edited and transmitted from Teddington.

BBC channels self evident .. itv were in TC 1 and Chris Evans was radiolinked from Riverside to TC and then coax /fibre to,the Tower ....

Going back to TIYL .. I sure that an out of London live programme gave the Post Office a problem as the normal programme switching needed to be sourced from outside London when it occurred.. a break from the routine !!!!

Not sure I understand your last sentence, programme switching was performed by the ITV companies themselves, the PO did circuit switching. Can you elaborate?

Unlike now where there is one source for itv ..in times gone by one programme contractor would play the programme out to the other programme companies that were taking it ..eg ATV will play out CrossRoads , Granada played out Corrie ..... and PO can connected it all together..... switching in ad breaks ... so rather than back haul to London output it from there
Did they..feed TIYL out if the local itv station as if it was their programme .
Rather than how it would be done now as @Mark C suggests

red16v will be along to clarify I'm sure, but it's my understanding (from him) that in fact the vast majority of ITV network programming was fed via the so called 'Nominated Contractor' (Thames Monday to Friday Afternoon, LWT Friday evening to Sunday night).

Corrie would be fed from Granada down to Thames, and from Thames back out to the network. I always thought YTV and stations north received it from Granada, but no, it came via Thames London. I assume Granada themselves just fed their own transmitter locally with it of course.

That arrangement simplified ITN news flashes, because Thames and LWT always had ITN as an incoming line to them, so they could neatly cut to them during a network programme, without any nasty splats.

So all the GPO did was to switch the relevant ITV company down the lines into Thames/LWT ?

You've certainly got the big picture.

It was down to making everything as 'efficient' if you like and that varied throughout the day and throughout the week. If it was best to have ATV playing a programme out to the entire network (ATV/ALL) or Granada to the entire network (GRA/ALL) then that would be how it was done on the day. But with ITV of old you always had to consider what programme preceded the present programme and what came after it. You did this to minimise the amount of switching around the network (each switch had a cost from the PO) and to make 'least work' of it for everyone else. You also had to bear in mind there were only so many circuits across the network. If it was more efficient to have it all networked from the London contractor then it would be ATV/All via THS/LWT or GRA/All via THS/LWT. In the evening when most of the network schedule was the same around the country it would generally be more efficient to network everything via the THS/LWT - if you were at the remote end of the network you didn't have to do anything - you just sat there (in your MCR) keeping a gentle eye that THS/LWT were remotely switching the programmes incoming to you. As for ITN, the rule was that no company would be more than one line switch away to get a source of ITN for obvious reasons. THS/LWT network switchers knew their responsibilities and ensured by their actual 'hand on the lever' operations that the remote receiving companies would be confident that what was scheduled to happen - did happen.

There would be a few hairy moments if the break between one programme ending and the next starting was, say, only 15 seconds because the network switcher at THS/LWT wanted to stay on the end of the first programme for as long as possible (to let the remote ITV companies get off it) but not so long that the remote companies did not see a visual 'whiff' of the next programme before it started (perhaps just a few seconds of the clock counting down of the next programme just so the remote companies could at least see it looked as though it was going to happen!). It all ran on trust and professionalism. (And ITN never had a clock on their titles - it just appeared from 'black' - but of course you would have seen the ITN studio colour bars incoming to you before then*). More often than not there would a commercial break giving plenty off time for PO circuit switches and ITV networking switches.

The PO handled all the inter-company physical circuits, they routed circuit A to circuit B as required but they did not care what was on the circuits as it was not their responsibility - the content on the circuits lay entirely with the contractors.

Of course there was a lot of intercompany part-networking and transferring of programmes between themselves at all times of the day and there was generally no need for these programmes to go via the London contractor - although they would if it was more efficient and easier! Do you get an idea as to how flexible it all was within the limitations of the system. Very flexible.

* but this I mean if you were sat at THS/LWT you would see ITN's bars incoming At the appropriate point you'd switch that circuit out to your network feed so that the other ITV companies would see that you were indeed feeding them with ITN, because at some point the chap in ITN's MCR is going to switch from those ITN colour bars to the ITN News Studio which will be (most likely unless they are releasing) Black! So at the remote ITV station you have seen the ITN colour bars and won't worry when you see the switch too. the studio (black) because you know at 22.00.00 the news titles will appear - as they did yesterday, the day before that etc etc. Trust and professionalism.

Mangled up that last bit then had to deal with a phone call before editing it - it should have read:

* By this I mean if you were sat at THS/LWT you would see ITN's bars incoming. At the appropriate point you'd switch that incoming circuit out to your network circuit so that the other ITV companies would see that you were indeed feeding them with ITN, because at some point the chap in ITN's MCR is going to switch from those ITN colour bars to the ITN News Studio which will be black! (most likely unless they are rehearsing). So, at the remote ITV station you have seen the ITN colour bars and won't worry when you see the switch to the ITN studio (black) because you know at 22.00.00 the news titles will appear - as they did yesterday, the day before that etc etc. Trust and professionalism.[/quote]

BBC channels self evident .. itv were in TC 1 and Chris Evans was radiolinked from Riverside to TC and then coax /fibre to,the Tower ....

Going back to TIYL .. I sure that an out of London live programme gave the Post Office a problem as the normal programme switching needed to be sourced from outside London when it occurred.. a break from the routine !!!!

Not sure I understand your last sentence, programme switching was performed by the ITV companies themselves, the PO did circuit switching.

It would have been like World of Sport but on a smaller scale. That programme had live contributions from various ITV companies' OB's, that were routed via their own studios, and then back into LWT as remote sources. However LWT's MCR (?) would have had a number of sources to switch to the WoS studio, all coming in via the GPO tower ?

For instance. Horse racing from York. Microwave to Emley, Emley to YTV Leeds, then to GPO Leeds, down to London Tower, then to LWT ?

However, what was going to air in YTV area, will have been LWT's studio output, via the GPO network, to YTV. (Even though their own pictures were taking a 400 mile round trip)

PO circuits came in to the building as circuits (KRS numbers if you like). LWT lines equalised these circuits and assigned them to be REMotes. (REM 1, REM 2 etc). These fed the central routing matrix and made available to all the technical areas including the studios. The studio engineer (STAR engineer) assigned these REMotes to assignable inputs to the vision mixer - now they are called DX's (DX being as you probably know a source remote to me). So, you might have REM 1 assigned to ST3 mixer input DX3, REM 2 might be assigned to mixer input DX4 etc etc. The studio mixer output returns to the routing matrix where it is picked up in the MCR area as a DX in their area - so, ST3 output might be assigned in MCR as DX 6 for example. And it's MCR DX6 that the network switcher (a person) switches out to an outgoing network feed to the PO tower. Hope that makes sense.

BBC channels self evident .. itv were in TC 1 and Chris Evans was radiolinked from Riverside to TC and then coax /fibre to,the Tower ....

Going back to TIYL .. I sure that an out of London live programme gave the Post Office a problem as the normal programme switching needed to be sourced from outside London when it occurred.. a break from the routine !!!!

Not sure I understand your last sentence, programme switching was performed by the ITV companies themselves, the PO did circuit switching.

It would have been like World of Sport but on a smaller scale. That programme had live contributions from various ITV companies' OB's, that were routed via their own studios, and then back into LWT as remote sources. However LWT's MCR (?) would have had a number of sources to switch to the WoS studio, all coming in via the GPO tower ?

For instance. Horse racing from York. Microwave to Emley, Emley to YTV Leeds, then to GPO Leeds, down to London Tower, then to LWT ?

However, what was going to air in YTV area, will have been LWT's studio output, via the GPO network, to YTV. (Even though their own pictures were taking a 400 mile round trip)

I used to be involved with a weekly live ITV network programme that visited various parts of the UK using an OB truck.

I think our feed often went to the local broadcaster and magically appeared on the ITV network....would the local broadcaster have transmitted the feed from the truck live to air or the feed from London?

At London Studios there used to be a weekly live 3-4 hour show, and when there was a long VT item the Vision Mixer would go for a break and ask me (not an engineer) to switch the VT direct to air to free up the mixer to rehearse the next segment of the programme.

Talking of Stephanie Beecham I bumped into at Simply Red show being broadcast from the London Studios, I thought it a bit strange a woman of her age was hanging around with the group 'backstage' in the café area by the river.